If you don’t know Robert Stacy McCain you are really missing something. As the saying goes, Stacy is a real trip. The Other McCain (he is the conservative one- unlike his distant cousin the Arizona senator) is no stranger to controversy mostly because of his honesty, he tells you exactly what he thinks.

I will tell you a secret about Stacy McCain that most people don’t know–if you need help –he will not only give you the shirt off his back but his back also.

Yesterday Stacy had to go into hiding. It stems from the fact he wrote a series of articles about convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin, who now runs a 501(c) 3 organization, a Democratic party operative who is partially funded by progressive sugar daddy George Soros. The Lid

Just very good writing on a disputed Chasidic tradition:

Pilgrimage The eighteenth century polemic surrounding the emerging Chasidic movement took place on multiple levels, among them halakhic. One important anti-Chasidic disputant was R. Yechezkel Landau, whose scholarship was so massive that he continues to be a major force in Jewish law even two centuries later. A number of his halakhic rulings can be seen as disputing Chasidic practices, such as his responsum forbidding the recitation of a “Le-Shem Yichud” formula before performing a mitzvah. Another is his forbidding the common Chasidic practice of visiting one’s rebbe on holidays Hirhurim

Thought provoking entry:

New Old Torah A famous physician once passed through Bluzhov, and the Chassidim prevailed upon him to examine their rebbe. With some anticipation in his voice, the doctor told the Rebbe that he had detected a potentially serious heart flutter. Unimpressed, the Rebbe asked the physician, “ Do you know what today is?”

Not aware that the day was anything special at all, he admitted that he did not.

“Today is the 3rd of Sivan. In three days time, we will receive the Torah. How could my heart not flutter?”

What have the Muslims ever done for us? Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer is an Aggadah-midrash compiled in the first centuries of the Muslim occupation (7th-9th). In chapter 30 we find a list of things the Muslims did in Israel.

“Woe to those who live in their [Muslim] days [...] The sons of Ishmael will do fifteen things in the Land at the end of days, and these are:

(1) They will measure the land with ropes, and (2) they will turn the cemetery into grazing lands and trash-heaps, and (3)they will measure from them (the cemeteries) and to the mountain-tops, and (4) lie will proliferate, and (5) truth will be persecuted [or: hidden], and (6) law will become distant from Israel, and (7) there will be many sins [or: poverty] in Israel. Ora, The Muqata

The three riders of the Proto-Apocalypse:

Violence, Peace and Hypocrisy It’s said and sung that “money makes the world go around,” but the grease that facilitates it IMHO is hypocrisy and anti-Semitism. Jews and Israel are always held up to obey rules that no other People, country or society ever need to worry about, and unfortunately it seems to never end.

There’s no rational, logical reason for people like myself, ordinary law-abiding people, Jews who live in Judea/Samaria to be condemned by international statesmen and media as “endangering” the peace while they coddle Iran trying to come up with all sorts of compromises to enable it to continue developing its nuclear industries, including weapons. Batya, Shiloh Musings

Do you like freaky and personal? Go for it:

Living in the Drawing I put on my bike helmet and coasted down our neighborhood hill to downtown, then across the Hawthorne Bridge on the municipally-designated bike lane, then pedalled easily in a middle gear up into Northeast Portland again via municipally-designated bike lanes.

The bike lanes occur hard by many bicycle stores – which have handmade signs in rainbow colors and rammed-earth structures for resting and bike racks confected from found scrap metal and owners who are lean bearded guys in jeans- just like in the drawings of the 1960s. A Jew in the Rain

Jewish bootlegger – a theme emerges?

(F)rum Runners Prohibition is perennially making a comeback, at least in the media; and this is one of those revival times. It began with the HBO TV series Boardwalk Empire, now in its second season, set in Prohibition-era Atlantic City and priding itself on its historical accuracy. The show is filled with gangsters, including prominent Jewish gangsters. This fall Ken Burns’ three-part PBS documentary Prohibition went beyond the subject’s curiosity and entertainment value to treat Prohibition as part of America’s struggles over self-definition. Banning alcohol, Burns shows, was not simply a battle over the “liquor question”; it was no less than an effort by rural white Anglo-Saxon Protestants to reclaim the country’s culture from the hard-drinking moral demons—that is, the immigrants—who had managed to pass through the gates. Lawrence J. Epstein, Jewish Ideas Daily

Insightful:

To The Last Byte The question isn’t, “What is Facebook worth?”, the real question is what are we worth? The secret of Facebook is that there is no Facebook, just reams of user data, information voluntarily submitted by hundreds of millions of people in exchange for a free ride, which is monetized by a company that makes nothing except increasingly broken code, by selling ads to companies hoping to convince consumers to buy the products manufactured by their Chinese partners. Daniel Greenfield, Sultan Knish

Divine gardening?

Everything old is new again There is an expression I like to quote from the 1998 edition of the Artscroll Chumash. “To the degree that one trusts in God’s help, one receives it.”

Someone else — I can’t remember who it was — said it very nicely. When you notice Hashem’s gifts and acknowledge them, it is as if He says, “You liked that? Wait till you see this! I’ve got a lot more to show you, since you’re interested…” Ki Yachol Nuchal!

On a need to know basis:

Advice to New Army Mothers For now, I’m in a place that years ago I never imagined I would be – safe on the other side, looking back. Now, with my two older sons out of the army, with Yaakov safely married in the States and Chaim in his studies, I can be glad they were in. I can say that they grew as people, as Jews, as Israelis, as men, as sons. Now, when it is safe.

Every once in a while, I meet a mother of a son about to go in – a mother not born in Israel, but one like me who came later in life with a son who is now about to begin the journey, or a mother who struggles through this period while she is there in America and her son has come alone. It is a strange feeling to be here, knowing they are just at the start. I met one such mother last night – I’ve known her for years but this time she told me her son was finishing high school and this time, it was across that divide that I began remembering those first days, those first fears. Paula R. Stern, A Soldier’s Mother

I totally agree with Dov Bear on this one:

Fisking “Thou shalt not text”
Over the last 20 years, as it has become easier than ever to acquire porn, rape in America has declined by more than 70 percent while other sexual assaults have fallen by over 60 percent. If Kobre was correct about porn “leading to violence against women” we’d see an increase, wouldn’t we? Instead, we’ve seen the dramatic opposite. As one wag put it “As raunch waxes rape wanes.”Dov Bear

About the Author:Tibbi Singer is a veteran contributor to publications such as Israel Shelanu and the US supplement of Yedioth, and Jewish Business News.

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